Prosecutor: Witnesses can authenticate text documents

Mayor's attorney says messages could have been prank.

Mayor's attorney says messages could have been prank.

May 02, 2008

DETROIT (AP) -- The prosecutor who filed perjury and other charges against Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and his former top aide said witnesses can authenticate text messages between them that appear to show they lied about an intimate relationship and firing a police officer. Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy said the witnesses could put to rest arguments by Kilpatrick and his defense team that strangers or rogue employees used the two-way communication devices of Kilpatrick and Christine Beatty to send thousands of bogus messages. "It would have to be a heck of an undertaking," Worthy told Detroit Free Press columnist Rochelle Riley for a story published Thursday. "Attorneys may make arguments that do not hold water. (But) there are certain ways under the law that we have to authenticate documents, whether they be cell phone records or medical records or any documents." Worthy, who refused to meet with Kilpatrick and Beatty and their attorneys before filing perjury, misconduct and obstruction of justice charges, said her office would "certainly listen" if Beatty wanted to talk. The interview on Wednesday came a day after Circuit Court Judge Robert Colombo Jr. released an 18-page document containing a series of often explicit text messages between Kilpatrick and Beatty. The release was in response to a lawsuit by The Detroit News and Free Press, which first published excerpts of text messages in January. The document was obtained from the computer of Michael Stefani, an attorney who represented three police officers in whistle-blowers' lawsuits against the city that were settled last year for $8.4 million. The text messages were taken from Beatty's city-issued pagers. Beatty's attorney, Mayer Morganroth, said Worthy says a lot of things that are hard to believe. If such witnesses exist, he said, they were illegally obtained. Kilpatrick's attorney, James Thomas, said Worthy has "serious hurdles to overcome" in proving the messages were saved and not capable of being changed, altered or deleted. "It could have been a prank. It could have been from the mayor, or it could have been from a third party," he said.